


We, This Way

by marxeline



Category: Lovely Little Losers
Genre: Shenanigans, episode 66 alt ending, vegan fred doesn't have any proper milk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-21
Updated: 2015-11-21
Packaged: 2018-05-02 16:40:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5255663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marxeline/pseuds/marxeline
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Balthazar.” Suddenly Peter is very aware of his too-hot-and-buzzing skin, and how he’s been worrying his bottom lip between his teeth, and the way he’s standing, and how he must look right now, arms slightly outstretched in a gesture he doesn’t remember consciously deciding to make.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We, This Way

**Author's Note:**

> The worst kind of self-indulgence. I have made my home atop Trash Mountain.
> 
> Title from Love's Labour's Lost (5.2.938)
> 
> Apologies to all vegans - I happen to like almond milk.

 

So Peter has always been pretty indecisive. It tends to catch people out. He knows how he comes across: Strong-willed, loud-mouthed, exactly the right shape to fill ‘positions of leadership’-shaped holes. But he’s bad with decisions, with “This bar or _this_ bar?”, with “Brownies or cheesecake?”, with big life-altering decisions such as, to give a contemporary example, “What do you want to do with your life?”

It made things difficult - kind of soul-stretchingly difficult - when he was working his way through the tangled mess of rubber bands that was, and continues to be, his sexuality. It’s nice to think, now, that there is one aspect of his life in which he doesn’t have to ‘make a decision’, he can just be.

As for every single other aspect...

To give a significantly more contemporary example, here’s his own voice, cutting through the commotion:

“Balthazar,” Peter guesses all that work on voice projection he’s been putting in for Faustus is paying off.

A single syllable does more to slice through him than all the raised voices combined. “What?”

He almost surprises himself with the desperation in his voice when he says it: “Please don’t go.” (Almost, but not quite, because it matches well to the continuous series of sharp tugs in his throat and chest and gut. His body stands in desperate, painful harmony.)

“Come with me.” Balthazar spreads his hands out like he’s making an offer, but Peter can see the resignation in his eyes and limbs; It’s more like a last resort.

Which is why it seems so very, very final. “I- I can’t, th-”

With a scoff, Balthazar stalks out into the night; And thus concludes tonight’s instalment of Flat Fragmentation. Their cohabitation, which had at some point appeared so functional on the surface but which Peter had known from the start would end like this, was fracturing more and more permanently. Albeit, he hadn’t expected it to end specifically like this, with Balthazar - out of all of them - upping and going.

His phone buzzes.

Back in his room he, characteristically, can’t decide where to sit. He bounces from the bed to his desk chair to leaning uselessly against a wall. Through the noisy fog of words creeping in from all corners of Peter’s mind, one makes more noise than the others. _The end_. Balthazar had told Peter to come with him, and Peter had floundered. It occurs to him that there is no right place to sit. The right place to be is outside, going after Balthazar.

Peter Donaldson makes a decision.

“Fuck it.”

Ignoring Freddie’s protestations, he pushes through the house with single purpose, not even shutting the door behind him, and speeds down the street.

-

Peter catches him up after about five minutes of running - jogging, flailing at a pace, _whatever, he’s out of practice_. Balthazar really isn’t going anywhere with anything resembling conviction. He’s pretty much dragging his feet, like he doesn’t really want to go. A lump forms in Peter’s throat; It tastes like wishful thinking.

“Let’s get some coffee.” There he goes again with that voice projection thing. Maybe he should work on toning it down a little instead, he thinks, because he feels like he’s practically booming in the otherwise abandoned street. It does feel a bit like a stage, and the streetlamps like spotlights. Balthazar twists his head back over his shoulder and pauses just like that, stock still, eyes trained on Peter but body still angled away as though he doesn’t know whether he should’ve just kept on walking.

He sighs. “Pedro,” he starts, under duress. Maybe the lights feel more like an interrogation for him. They’re too bright, either way. Peter wants to close his eyes.

“Balthazar.” Suddenly Peter is very aware of his too-hot-and-buzzing skin, and how he’s been worrying his bottom lip between his teeth, and the way he’s standing, and how he must look right now, arms slightly outstretched in a gesture he doesn’t remember consciously deciding to make. But he’s also very aware of his best friend, standing ten feet away, turning shyly towards him - and really, since when did Balthazar get shy around _him?_ \- and looking like the best risk Peter will ever take, even if the rope bridge breaks. “I would really, really like some coffee right now.”

A beat. “And Vegan Fred doesn’t have any proper milk.” An olive branch.

Peter nods, noting the ever-so-slight quirk of Balthazar’s lips. “And Vegan Fred doesn’t have any proper milk.”

-

The neon blue lights are harsh, harsher still against the white linoleum and the stark overheads, but Balthazar looks soft and warm under Peter’s gaze. Maybe because of Peter’s gaze. Their coffee is brought over and Balthazar unhooks his thumbs from where they were pulling down on the cuffs of his jumper to wrap his hands around the mug. Peter is grateful for somewhere to put his own hands. He can’t remember where they’re supposed to go.

They wait in silence for their coffees to cool. Or, they try. Ten seconds pass and Peter is squirming under what feels like more stage lights and he feels like he’s forgotten the lines to a pivotal soliloquy. This is his ‘to be or not to be’ moment. The coffee is still steaming. He meets Balthazar’s eyes.

“Okay, so.” _Good start, Peter, the audience are captivated._ “I just. See, uh,” he clutches at his mug like a buoy.

“Hey, Pedro,” he opens his eyes, not having noticed he’d closed them. Balthazar seems tethered to his drink too. “We don’t have to- You don’t have to, you know. We can just drink our coffee.” But his voice is measured, his eyes steady in a deliberate, forced way, and Peter knows the gravity of this. In following Balthazar, he’s said something already; There are implications already out there, hanging between them, and Peter can bat them away if he wants to, but he can’t take them back. He knows that Balthazar knows it too, he’s just giving him an out. Peter doesn’t want one.

All of a sudden, the lights seem dimmer. This isn’t a stage, and they aren’t reading from a script. There were no rehearsals here, and Peter is allowed to be nervous because of it, but the only one who’ll get to see what comes next is Balthazar. His best friend.

He sets his coffee down.

“After we recorded Stay-”

“We can just drink our-”

But he’s made his decision. “I don’t want to.” A beat. Balthazar swallows. “After we recorded Stay, I wanted to kiss you. I know you know that. I’m just trying to get some facts straight. I don’t think any of us have been straight with the facts in months.”

Balthazar smiles, seemingly despite himself. “That’s one thing I’ll never be.”

Peter feels some warmth spread back into his cheeks. “The ladies did sigh.” There’s something growing in the space across the table, and if the implications took on shape, they’d be crowding his vision. “Anyway, I wanted to kiss you. I, uh, continued to want to kiss you. In fact I still do want to kiss you, that never really went away, I mean-”

“I think you’ve made that sufficiently clear,” Balthazar sticks both his thumbs up, studying a stain on the plastic table.

“Right, yeah, probably. Anyway I think,” Peter points to himself “that you think,” points across the table “that I don’t know what I want beyond that.”

“I don’t know what I think,” he replies, cautious.

“I know what I want, Balthazar, but I have no idea what you want.” Peter intends on stopping there, but can’t help himself. “Sometimes I get, like, a feeling, but then-” Okay, he should definitely have stopped there.

Balthazar meets his eyes again and everything in them has changed, even the colour seems darker, and Peter remembers saying once that Balthazar’s eyes were his favourite colour - and of course that hadn’t been a joke, has everybody _seen_ his eyes? - but he’s going to have to amend that statement. Balthazar’s eyes are his favourite colours, plural. Any and every colour that they are, those are his favourite colours. A whole spectrum of them. There’s something else in his eyes right now, beneath the colour - in the colour: Heat.

“Coffee’s cold,” Balthazar notes. It’s a whisper but Peter is so tuned in that it sounds just as loud and immediate as his booming declarations of earlier this evening.

“Yeah,” he shrugs, huffing out an awkward fusion of a laugh and a nervous release, trying to rid himself of some of the obscene tension building under his skin, failing.

Chair legs sliding on linoleum. “Let’s go for a walk,” Balthazar doesn’t wait for Peter to follow. Once again, he does.

-

Somewhere along the way, one hand slips into another.

“There is literally no evidence whatsoever,” Peter can’t help but laugh.

“It’s true!” Mock outrage, slightly clammy palms. A combination of familiar and new. “There are so many corresponding accounts.”

“You mean there are so many corresponding documentaries specifically filmed to serve as ‘evidence’ that there are corresponding accounts in place of, you know, actual solid accounts.”

“I can’t believe you don’t believe,” Balthazar shakes his head, so disappointed in him. There it is again: Warmth.

It’s good to be back here, in place they used to occupy so comfortably. Peter is happy to be talking about nothing much at all with his best friend, clammy palms aside.

“C’mon, show me some proof, then I’ll bite.” He doesn’t miss Balthazar’s flush, nor the momentary upwards twitch of his eyebrows. _Huh._

Balthazar gathers himself. “You don’t deserve proof. It’s all about having faith.”

“Well then I guess when the great, worldwide alien abduction _doesn’t happen_ , I’ll be thrown to the side with all the other heathens who don’t believe in something which _doesn’t exist_.”

“Frankly, Peter, I’m shocked and appalled.”

“Did you really just stick your tongue out at me? Really, Stanley Balthazar Jones? Mature university student and known adult with a very proper adult name?”

They stop underneath a sycamore tree. It’s darker here, away from all artificial night lights, but Peter’s either got great night vision or really great Balthazar vision, because he can see figures of fear play shadow-like behind the gauze with which he still guards his eyes. “Hey,” his voice is low, steady. “What do you think the meaning of Pedrazar is?” The shadows grow more defined and Peter doesn’t think Balthazar is trying to hide how scared he is anymore.

Peter grins and squeezes his hand. “I’d say it’s awaiting definition.”

“To be confirmed?” Balthazar holds his gaze steady.

Peter knows they’re talking about something more than just names, here. “Oh no, Balthazar, I’d say it’s been confirmed for a while.”

-

“Am I correct in assuming we’re saying ‘Fuck the rules’?”

He’s asking Balthazar’s back, because his head is currently preoccupied with trying to wedge Peter’s somewhat stubborn bedroom window open. Balthazar’s back is apparently expressive enough, though. It shakes with visible amusement and - probably, hopefully - happiness. If it is happiness, Peter can definitely relate, as he hears a muffled “Fuck the rules!” carry out the window.

Peter knows it’s warmer inside, but even once through the window and stood looking straight at Balthazar, he can’t tell the difference. He doesn’t think the warmth of his body is affected by atmosphere anymore.

Time passes heavily and Peter understands why it’s called ‘locking’ eyes. What must be at least a minute passes in an almost-pastiche of their game of chicken. It feels like an encore, like they’ve been called back from the end of their narrative to enact a reprise, but they expected it all along. It feels inevitable. Peter has tortured himself with looking back over that video tens of times, and seeing himself and the mistakes he’s made from a third person perspective has nothing on being in the moment (has nothing on it being just him and Balthazar; no camera, no games). This time, it’s Peter who leans forward with eyes closed, aiming to catch Balthazar’s lips lightly under his own.

And Balthazar is right there, brushing his lovely mouth across Peter’s worn and worried own.

They both inhale - still _only just_ touching lips, still tense - and Peter is grateful, really, for how decisive his best friend can be. This is a situation which calls for initiative, and he’s fairly certain you need to be occupying your physical form for that. Peter is beginning to forget what that feels like, because he’s evidently entered the astral plane.

He lets Balthazar walk him up against the wall; He lets Balthazar cup his fingers lightly round his jaw; He lets Balthazar run the other hand through his hair and back, to fit behind his head and pull him forward. And then it stops being a matter of ‘letting’ Balthazar do anything.

The kiss doesn’t start off sweet, but it gets there. It starts off with something like a sigh of relief, the two of them falling into each other, all that was structured for self-protection and self-sabotage collapsing, finally. Their lips ache a little, with how good it feels to crest and break against each other after so much strain. Peter can feel Balthazar smile against his cheek, and he nudges back with his nose. A few seconds pass where they can’t even kiss for grinning so wide. So yeah, it gets there.

Even before watching the videos back, Peter had taken issue with the idea that he and Balthazar had actually kissed. He hadn’t voiced his doubts, because really, he wasn’t going to argue with Ben or Fred after… all that. But just now, kissing Balthazar without the lens of a camera weighing on him, he knows for sure. Almost-kisses don’t compare. He would have remembered this.

Peter wraps one arm snug around Balthazar’s waist, marvelling at the very fact he can. (Marvelling a little at the feel of Balthazar’s waist, too, if he’s honest.) The smiles are fading from both their faces, the sweetness deepening. The air around and between them is changing so quickly now and Peter is breathless with how many shades of wanting this there are, and how clearly he can see them all play across Balthazar’s face. From falling into each other, they start to rebuild. Peter tugs at Balthazar’s jumper with his free hand, and this kiss is a new progression altogether.

What had seemed so soft and warm across the table was rich and solid and overwhelming up against him. Peter loves the feeling of another chest right there, pressing back with everything he gives, matching him force for force. Balthazar tugs at Peter’s bottom lip with his teeth and Peter sucks in a breath. The kiss deepens, and all that was soft and warm and innocent is as lost as he is.

Balthazar groans. The first domino falls.

Hands clumsy, clutching wildly at Balthazar’s body in a desperate effort to convince himself that this is real and happening despite his tenuous grasp on reality and corporeal existence, Peter can’t help the noises he makes any more than he can help the way his lungs seem to have shrunk to accommodate more important things. His chest aches with it, and as he gasps his way down Balthazar’s neck with slick, swollen lips, he has next to no control over his words, heaved with ragged voice.

“How do you feel about…” Fuck. He raises his head and pulls back enough to focus on Balthazar through the haze without going cross-eyed. It’s a struggle.

“About?” There’s a glint in Balthazar’s eyes. Something like teasing. Bastard.

Peter rests his head back against the wall and exhales, swinging their hands from side to side and trying to swallow his nerves. “Shenanigans.” He closes his eyes.

One hand is dropped suddenly from where it was swinging with its partner. He keeps his eyes squeezed shut. _‘Shenanigans’? Really?_

He hears Balthazar’s breathing: Even, heavy. There’s some shuffling.

“Peter,” Balthazar takes the uselessly hanging hand back in his own.

“Yes,” he breathes, eyes still firmly closed. His hand is being tugged gently, guided forwards until the tips of his fingers brush denim and still further until his palm is- oh- “Oh.” He opens his eyes.

Balthazar is so close that Peter feels dizzy, chest heaving so that it brushes Peter’s with every breath in, eyes dark and so heavy it seems like he can barely keep them open. When he speaks his voice is rougher than Peter’s heard it. “I’m feeling pretty good about,” a beat, his hips twitch, “shenanigans.”

Peter groans. “That is possibly the least sexy word imaginable.” He unclasps his other hand from Balthazar’s own, their swinging arms having come to a standstill. He guides Balthazar’s now free hand between their bodies.

“There are definitely less sexy words,” Balthazar jokes, raggedly, and Peter isn’t sure he can handle combination of hearing any reference to sex spoken in that voice right now, not as he’s lightly, nervously pressing Balthazar’s hand to his own crotch. Balthazar’s breath hitches. “Fuck, I-”

“Really don’t care about words that much anymore?” Peter offers.

“I care a lot about what you have to say, Pedro.” The sincerity in Balthazar’s face gives Peter pause, and he’s struck dumb for several seconds by how much _more_ this is than just hands and mouths and bodies. But then Balthazar moves impossibly closer and closer still, taking Peter’s arms and wrapping them back around his waist. He presses the length of their torsos together even more fully, thighs resting heavily on Peter’s own as he, very deliberately, grinds down. “You were saying something about words?”

Peter doesn’t have any.

-

Through the window, Peter can see that the streetlights are beginning to flicker out with the sunrise. Balthazar hums against his neck. “Feels nice.”

“Going for nonchalance, are we?” Peter pokes him in the ribs. “Please leave your reviews in the guestbook on the way out. ‘Feels nice. Two stars.’”

“I meant this, specifically,” Balthazar mumbles, stroking the hair right above the nape of Peter’s neck. “It feels nice, where you’ve just shaved it. I always want to do this.”

A beat, and Peter smooths his hands appreciatively down Balthazar’s chest, drawing him in closer still.

He swallows, glances at the clock. It’s six. “We should acquire some form of sustenance, and-”

“Stay here for the rest of the day?” With a chorus of reluctant squeals, the bed shifts to accommodate their movements.

Peter smiles, sliding his legs out from their blanket casing. “I think this arrangement is going to work out just fine.” It comes out sounding more uncertain than he’d intended.

“Me too,” all traces of fear have exited Balthazar’s eyes, stage left, their part played in full. Peter decides to write his own off, too. Then he’s being dragged to his feet and walked towards the door. “What do you want to eat?”

He groans. Food-based decisions: Not something he’s ever going to find easy. “I don’t know- Wait,” a smirk. Waggling his eyebrows, he takes Balthazar’s hand and all but skips towards the kitchen. “Something indulgent. Fuck the rules.”

This time, it’s Balthazar who follows him.


End file.
